it said; and I settled down to the dayand night and part of another day's journey with peace in my heart andthe courage to take whatever was coming to me from Sam.
When you are doing a thing you know is wholly wrong it is best to makeup your mind beforehand just what kind of a right action you are goingto claim it to be. It only took me until Pittsburg to have my coursewith Sam mapped out. I was just going to ask him fairly what right hehad to go to farming with a lot of strange and untried Belgians andrefuse to take me in, when I had proved myself a good and faithfulcomrade and worker for him ever since I could stand on my feet.
"I just want him to answer me that," I said to myself, and went to bedin the berth at six-thirty and didn't wake up any more until I was atLouisville at eleven. I had been in New York two weeks, and I neededsleep. The interval between that time and three o'clock, which was thehour that I stood before mother and her latest rose-crocheted mat, Ispent in strengthening and fortifying my position.
"Why, Betty!" said mother, keeping the place open in the magazine shewas crocheting from, but kissing me so tenderly that I knew shesuspected something had happened to me.
"I came home because I had to, and I'll tell you about it just as soonas I come back from out at Sam's, where I have to go as fast as I can onbusiness," I said, as I hurried out to Eph for Redwheels and up to myroom for my corduroys and middy blouse. I knew Sam would get his newfamily off at the station at the cross-roads. I wanted to be at TheBriers all established and at work when he got there. I have heard lotsof times that possession is nine points of the law, and I was determinedto possess all nine.
In less time than it takes to tell it Redwheels and I were spinning awayout Providence Road. I had gone out on that road in early April insearch of Sam, when I thought nothing could equal the young lovelinessof the valley; I had driven Peter out when it was in its May flowering,and back and forth I had gone through all its midsummering, but it hadnever looked to me as it did when I came down into it from a farcountry, in the ripeness of its mid-September. All the leaves were stillon the trees and many of them still rich green, but there was frost inthe air, and along the edges of the early sweet-gum and sugar-maplebranches there were crimson and bronze trimmings. Most of the gorgeous,molten-gold grain was in stacks in the fields, and everywhere for milesand miles were stretched the wigwams of the shocked corn, seeming tooffer homes for as many homeless as could come and ask shelter.Goldenrod stood up stiff and glorious in all the fence corners, whilegnarled vines, fairly dragged down with wild grapes, festoonedthemselves from tree to tree, some of which were already heavily loadedwith their own big, round, blackening walnuts.
Along the road there was a procession of foodstuffs going to town inheavy old farm wagons with their overalled drivers. Wheat in bales andwheat in sacks was piled on wagon after wagon, and I counted eleventeams hauling in loads of shucked ears of corn that looked almost twofeet long. Oh, I was glad to think that those people who had fled from afamine-stricken land would meet that procession as soon as they got offthe train, and my eyes misted so, as I thought of the joy that must wellup in their hearts, that I came very near running over an old pig motherwho was waddling across the road in the lead of nine of the fattestlittle black-and-white sucklings I have ever seen, each one with histail curled at exactly the same angle. Giving her a wide run I swung offinto Brier Lane. The old cardinal that had been so cross to me allsummer, when poor Redwheels's puff had disturbed his family, wastrillingly glad to see me, and flew almost across my shoulder as hedarted and whirled his welcome. And what should I meet in the middle ofthe lane, evidently off playing hooky where she should not have been,but Mrs. Buttercup and my young spotted namesake! I immediately climbedout of the car and greeted them both so affectionately that, with myarms around Mrs. Buttercup's neck, I persuaded her to go back the wayshe had come, while I drove along behind her at a suitable snail's pace.I had to stop every once in a while, when she turned around, to assureher that I knew it was best for her to go home with her full udder, asSam would soon be there to be welcomed and with company to be fed.
After I had turned her into the south meadow gate, opposite thecedar-pole entrance to The Briers, I went up the hill at a lightningpace because the nearer I got to the fledgling and my garden the moreanxious I was for a reunion with them both. I met the garden first, as Irounded up in front of the old hovering, red-roofed house that lookedmore like home to me than any building I had ever seen in my short andeventful life.
There is no love in the world that reciprocates like that of a garden.If you work and love and plan for it, promptly it turns around and overand gives back a hundredfold more than you put into it. All summer longwe had been digging out of, picking from, and cutting off of that littleplot of ground, and there it was reaching out with more to return to me.Long rows of white and purple cosmos danced and fluttered round-eyedblossoms in welcome, while some bronze xenias fairly bobbed over andkissed my rough garden boots. Miss Editha's cock's-combs strutted in agorgeous row down the east walk, and what could have been a greatersurprise than that handed me by a row of jolly round squash, though Ihad been sure we had picked the last languishing fluted fruit from thevine the last week of August? But there lay long green vines completelyresuscitated by the September rains; and nestled among their draperiesof huge leaves were squash and squash, also big yellow blossoms andsmall green-yellow buds, I was so perfectly delighted at the recovery ofmy friends that I reached down and patted one of their head brancheswith its green tendril curls. There were a lot of gorgeous nasturtiumsunder the window of the living-room; but, of course, nobody expects moreof nasturtiums than for them to be faithful unto death by frost.However, I did pick off a red one and proceed to chew it up with thedeepest appreciation of its peppery flavor. And as I chewed withsmarting tongue I cast my eyes along a row of beans that was fairlyloaded with snaps, which made my thumb smart in anticipation of theirgathering, until my gaze was suddenly arrested by something that sent meflying down the walk to the south end of the garden.
Now, a few weeks after I had hastily planted those hollyhock seeds Samand I had sentimentalized over, I had found in Grandmother Nelson's bookthat hollyhocks never bloom their first season, but have to root andgrow about twenty-four months before they blossom; and, somehow, thatdepressed me because everything in the world seemed slow at that time.How did I know where I would be after all that time, or that I wouldever see them bloom, though they were making great leafy heads whichboth Sam and I strenuously ignored, while every time I went to digaround their roots somebody had done it before me! There they were,perfectly huge with their great fluted leaves, and right at the end ofthe row an extra-large plant had sent up a tall, green spike on the endof which a great, pink doll-blossom was shaking out her rosy skirts inthe afternoon sun. I stood for a minute looking at her in utter rapture.Then I reached out my arms and gathered her in and put a kiss right inthe center of her sweet heart. After that I fled to the barn in searchof the fledgling.
I found him sheltering in his small jacket five little late chicks thatwould insist in running out from under the old hen, who was busilyengaged hatching out their small brothers and sisters. He was afraidthey would get fatally chilled.
"I needed you bad, Betty, if any more of these little ones was to actcrazy like this," he said as I cautiously embraced him and his downybabies. "Put these three in your jacket so I can catch the next one thatcomes out. Old Dommie is 'most through, and then she can take them all."His faith in old Dommie, who to my certain knowledge had hatched twoother families since spring, was not misplaced. In less than a half-hourall egg debris of the family advent had been removed and the babies putto bed under her breast and subjected to a sharp peck of her controllingbill.
By this time the sun had begun to drop down over toward Old Harpeth, anda lovely purple was stealing all over the place which mingled with agreat veil of blue smoke from over by the spring, where, I felt sure,Dr. Chubb had lighted twenty new altar fires for the welcome of thehome-comers. I wanted to go and see t
he camp, but someway I felt that itwas time to go to the gate to meet Sam and his great big children, sodown the Byrd and I went.
When we got to the gate they were not in sight, and we started up BrierLane to meet them. In my heart there was not the least particle of doubtthat they would all be glad to see me, but I never expected it to happenas it did. Just as we came to the bend in Brier Lane that skirts aroundthe first hill I heard beautiful voices raised in a weird joy-chant, andin a moment they all came into view, all walking and singing, with theirthings piled high on the wagons that followed them. In the midst of thetumbling, frolicking children, the chattering, pointing, exclaimingwomen, and the eagerly questioning men strode Sam with a small girlpickaback across his broad shoulders and the old praying-man walking byhis side in deep conversation. I stood still to wait and let them allsee me. The result was glorious. I had never
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